Polls, Points & Leaderboards

Polls create interactive engagement opportunities during live broadcasts. Hosts can ask questions, collect viewer responses in real time, and run contests with points and leaderboards.

Creating a Poll

1. Open the Polls tab in the Creator Studio left panel.
2. Click Create Poll.
3. Enter a question and up to 4 response options.
4. Optionally mark one option as the correct answer (enables points and leaderboard).
5. Choose to send the poll immediately or save it for later.

Managing Polls

Once created, polls appear in the Polls tab with the following actions:

| Action | Description | |--------|-------------| | Send / Pin | Push the poll to viewers. It appears as a card in the chat feed. | | Unpin | Remove the poll from the active display. | | Edit | Modify the question, options, or correct answer. The correct answer can be set after creation — useful for prediction-style questions. | | Close | Stop accepting new responses. Results remain visible to viewers. | | Delete | Permanently remove the poll (with confirmation). |

Hosts can also view vote counts and percentages for each option in real time.

Points

If a poll has a correct answer, you can assign point values to responses. Points work like a scoring system:

• Higher points for less likely correct answers (like betting odds).
• Lower points for more obvious answers.
• Points accumulate on the leaderboard as viewers answer correctly across multiple polls.

You can specify the correct answer before sending the poll, or set it later. This is useful for prediction-style questions where the answer is not known in advance (e.g., live sports outcomes).

Leaderboard

When polls with correct answers are used, a live leaderboard automatically tracks viewer scores.

• The leaderboard is visible in the Creator Studio (Score tab) and to viewers in the app.
• Rankings update in real time as poll results come in.
• The leaderboard can also be displayed as an overlay on the broadcast video.

Contest Mode

When a poll with a correct answer is created, HotMic automatically sets up a contest for the stream. All polls with correct answers within the same stream contribute to the same leaderboard. This enables multi-question contests and trivia games.

Viewer Experience

Viewers see polls as interactive cards in the chat feed:

1. Poll appears with the question and answer buttons.
2. Viewer taps their chosen answer to vote.
3. After voting, results are displayed with progress bars showing vote percentages.
4. If the poll has a correct answer, a green checkmark indicates the right response.
5. Closed polls remain visible but no longer accept votes.

Technical Notes

• Polls are delivered to viewers via the Platform API polling mechanism (3-second interval).
• Poll data uses a 2-tier caching system (Redis + SQS) for high-performance delivery at scale.
• Poll state changes (send, close, delete) are broadcast via HotMic real-time messaging platform for immediate display.